Haunting the narrative, but not as a ghost this time ‘round

On making kintsugi with our flaws - because even broken things can be beautiful!

It goes like this: the staccato of your heartbeat is anything but musical, and when you sink your trembling fingers into your chest cavity, excavating the webs of sinew from the patchwork deformity that dwells within, that romps desperately against the arch of your ribs like it wants to live — what else do you find?

When you are set free among other birds, you forget that you were destined to fall instead of fly. With my screwdriver palms, I could wrench the long kaput wings from your scapula, soothe the exit wounds breathing hard on your vertebrae, drip feed you with the consolation that you were once a child splintering with potential. But I am no stranger to ambition, both mine and yours, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we will artlessly stitch together these textile dreams into the handfuls of makeshift feathers on our backs — all for the singular breadcrumb of sweet glory. And, between your hiccups and dry heaving, you decide to burn so brightly you do not feel the heat eat away at your skin, and perhaps in the light you’ll find a version of you you don’t completely hate.

What do we do when the wings we trust for too long start to fail us? What do we do when the yearning to become something we’re not wholly consumes us? What, then, happens? Like self-radicalised nihilists, we talk about existence as if it’s this futile, inherently inconsequential thing in the face of the stunning cosmos. It is this grim realization that stokes our desire to make a name for ourselves, to know that a legacy will live on, prevailing beyond the platform-gap length of our otherwise ephemeral lives. But we don’t admit how it kisses away the fire from the barrel of our moist shotgun eyes, fugitive in the false horizons of its fractured hydrant lips. It runs a warm, tender hand along the curve of tear-stained cheeks and cradles the arrhythmia of defective hearts. And we forget the way our fingers were made to interlock with each other, the way the crooks of our necks have been perfectly sculpted to fit a human face. What I mean to say is, in a swirling vortex of people trying to cement themselves into the world's memory, we slip up on the gorgeous intricacies of what we were truly made for — connection.

On TikTok, I saw a line on how

‘You are the universe experiencing itself’,

beautifully encapsulating the undermined profundity of human life. And yet, there is an absurdity to the algorithm dispensing it to me like an automatic feeder just as I consciously and very self-destructively resolved to deep fry my dopamine receptors and extinguish all intellectual effort through doom scrolling; but I digress. The universe is all-encompassing, and I, against my own will, find it politely placed by my feet every time. I see it in the way scientific research has illustrated the astonishing parallels between the cosmic filaments that interweave each star and planet into an amalgamation of galaxies that we call the universe and the synapses sparking between ricocheting neuron bullets in the war trench that is our brain. I see it in the way our corneas have been biologically engineered to barricade against absconding photons, simply so we can behold the cosmos, in all of its captivating brilliance. And in place of rigid skeletons and dull blood is gorgeous stardust intrinsic to our anatomy — for we are moving, breathing vessels of the universe observing, perceiving itself.

Ocean Vuong once powerfully asserted in Night Sky with Exit Wounds,

‘My mother said I could be anything I wanted - but I chose to live’.

Likewise, I have been taught for almost my whole life that my academic excellence was what would allow me to wrap my hands around the thinning thread of my helium balloon dreams and jerk them from the sky to the ground — the knowledge beat into my flesh with hard plastic canes and the back of a mother’s knowing hand till black and blue. But I don’t want to watch my life go by from the sidelines, enmeshed in a vicious cycle of chasing and never quite being satiated. I want to see myself; beyond the noose of arbitrary numbers that the world has corded tight around my throat. I want to see myself; with the same fascination I see the universe with. I want to live, and so should you.

Neo Rui Qin

4 Grace

2025